Fouling experience this year

Cantata

Cantata

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I've kept my boat in mud berths off the Swale for 20 years, first in Oare Creek (Faversham) and more recently in nearby Conyer, four miles away.
Every year the fouling experience has been the same - where the hull surface contacts the mud, it acquires a thin hard coating over the antifouling, and barnacles attach to this coating. Even after a mid-season scrub, more have attached when we come to haul out for winter.
Until this year.
I came out for a scrub in mid-August - the bottom was literally clear of barnacles - maybe half a dozen.
Friends of mine at Oare Creek hauled out last weekend having been in since Easter - exactly the same, no barnacles.
Why? What's been different about this year?
Could it have been the hot spell killed 'em off? I guess the mud got pretty warm when the tide was out.
Any ideas?
 
I reckon you must have sent them all over to me on the Blackwater...

Loads of the little sods this year and I had put it down to the warmer sea temperature ! You thought it was warmer and that’s why you didn’t get any.... maybe someone’s got an answer?

I’m on a half tide drying mooring and usually get weeds.....but none this year and I use the cheapest antifoul I can get , ‘Flag Cruising’, I use the same brand every year...

Wierd !

R
 
The ones Applescruffs didn't get attached themselves to Pagan. Never seen my boat so badly fouled even when we were on a swinging mooring. In the mud berth for the last three years we've had no weed to speak of and only tiny little barnacles below the "mud" line. This year, absolutely covered in the little critters, and not so little critters and weed city!
 
Athene V30 said:
I have had my cleanest bottom on lift out in 20 years of boat ownership. Put it down to regular movement and swapping several times between salt and fresh water. Hope next season is much the same.
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I've had my dirtiest bottom in 40+ years. I put it down to lack of movement and lack exposure to fresh or brackish water. I did a scrub a couple of months ago but we've got weed hanging off the water line again and are coming out next week. The water has been warm this year and a lot of people around us at Walton have got foul, especially those with Coppercoat.
 
I came out in late summer, and had the worst fouling in about a dozen years – lots of sea squirts and red coralline algae, to my biologically untutored eye. As we don’t normally go into fresh water, I can’t I put it down to that but attribute it to having used the boat very little, coupled with the first year of a plan to give one and two coats of a/f in alternate years – now of course abandoned! :rolleyes:
 
Terrible this year on the Crouch. Bottom scrubbed in April, there was sufficient fouling by June to block the engine inlet. :disgust: I had have her hauled out and cleaned again. :sorrow:
 
Really bad this year. I have a drying mooring in Benfleet Creek, The boats around me came out the same irrespective of what anti foul was used. Strangely the boats that were moored at Leigh came out almost spotless.
 
We went back to Seajet Shogun this year from the sh1te that was EU45. Much lower mileage, and much less fouling on the hull. Should even only need one coat for next season...

Also a step forward with the Autoprop… This year the Hammerite Special metals primer stuck... Nothing on top did... :(
 
We have been from the Crouch to the Baltic and back every year for the last 7 years. Each year, with the transitions between salt, fresh and brackish water, when we get back, we have been pretty clean. However, this year, when in the Netherlands, the fouling with barnacles and mussels was so bad that our raw water intake was almost blocked. A lot of scrubbing and scraping (diving when we were in Ijsselmeer) got us home at the beginning of September, and since then the water intake has been ok. However, we are still in the water, so I don't know how much growth there is on the hull. We thought that it was probably the very warm water temperature encouraging the mussels etc.
 
Ali-alshira said:
We have been from the Crouch to the Baltic and back every year for the last 7 years. .
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That is interesting. I have been doing Bradwell to channel islands for the last few years plus a few trips into the southern Dutch canals & would like a change. What sort of routes have you been doing that would suit a single hander from the east coast.
Sorry for the thread drift.
 
Our route is usually from either Walton backwaters or Lowestoft to Ijmuiden (18 or 24 hours), then the rest can be done in daysails. Sometimes we go through IJsselmeer, Harlingen, various Dutch frisian islands, or via Den Helder, or can use the Standing mast route to Delfzijl. We have shallow draft, so can go behind frisian islands to Norderney or one of the others, and then a long hop to Cuxhaven. If you have deeper draft, then you have to sail outside the islands. Through the Kiel canal, and then you can wander north into Denmark, or east into Germany - lots of places to go!

I'll send a pm.
 
Ali-alshira said:
Our route is usually from either Walton backwaters or Lowestoft to Ijmuiden (18 or 24 hours), then the rest can be done in daysails. Sometimes we go through IJsselmeer, Harlingen, various Dutch frisian islands, or via Den Helder, or can use the Standing mast route to Delfzijl. We have shallow draft, so can go behind frisian islands to Norderney or one of the others, and then a long hop to Cuxhaven. If you have deeper draft, then you have to sail outside the islands. Through the Kiel canal, and then you can wander north into Denmark, or east into Germany - lots of places to go!

I'll send a pm.
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We followed a boat with 1.8m draft from Delfzijl to Norderney once, and there was a large yacht with unknown draft astern, so it is possible without shoal draft, but a bit tight on time going W-E, easy the other way.

We met a chap solo with an Elizabethan 23 in Stralsund a few years ago - I think he wrote articles about it - so it is eminently doable, in fact, once you are there you can do a lot with day-sails <50 miles and often much less.
 
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